Agenda

Screening of the film 'Who killed Walter Benjamin...'

Activity organized on occasion of the 16th European Day of Jewish Culture 2015

Friday, September 4,

Call de Girona

Who Killed Walter Benjamin...
Spain - Holland, 2005, 73 min.
Director: David Mauas
Documentary

Catalan: at 10am and 4pm
Spanish: at 11.30am and 5.30pm
English: at 1pm and at 7pm
French: at 2.30pm

In September 1940, after seven years of exile, Walter Benjamin crosses the Pyrenees in a desperate attempt to escape the Nazis.

According to the official version, Walter Benjamin did make it across the French-Spanish border successfully. But when he arrived at Portbou, a sudden change in legislation impeded his entry into Spain and he was obliged to spend the night at a local hotel under the close vigilance of three guards, whose orders were to deport him the following morning.

In utter despair, Benjamin took his own life, swallowing an overdose of morphine. The local doctor, however, declared it a natural death and Benjamin was given a Catholic burial in the municipal cemetery, under a wrong name.

Who Killed Walter Benjamin... reaches for answers among the suspicious circumstances of his death. Giving at the same time, a portrait of a frontier town anchored between two fronts.

This film is not just a reconstruction of a death but the living portrait of the scene of the crime.

Free screening at the temporary exhibition Walter Benjamin. Constellations of the exile.

Information: www.whokilledwalterbenjamin.com